I haven't seen a post like this yet and I check these forums often. So, I want to touch on it. Something that came to my mind is that maybe all of these issues in terms of crafting and exp surplus aren't really mistakes but planned this way.

Consider something like this;

SE released a game that is nowhere near complete. Now, many say it was meant to be released around WoW's Cataclysm to take some attention away from it. Basically, release this game at the end of the WotLK expansion when everyone is bored and waiting/looking for something else to do BEFORE release of the next expansion. This being said, this makes sense because FFXIV seems to be a rushed release which fits in that timeframe.

Why did this come to my mind? Let me explain.

Well, this game WAS released incomplete and there isn't much in terms of content. That much is a fact. With that in mind, maybe SE did plan it like I said in the previous paragraph and has put these things in place to make sure you do not get too far ahead in the game before they have enough content to support game-play at end game and also so that you are not too far ahead for the PS3 release. I think it is possible that they don't want people leveling physical, class and crafting ranks too high right now because there is no content and don't want a big gap in rank and economy at PS3 release. Also keep in mind that this was an issue at FFXI's release in NA and they may have learned from it. Maybe all of these patches coming were previously planned to allow this game to progress to where they want it at PS3 release and still allowed for them to get it onto shelves before the Cataclysm release. Doing this would allow them to grab some bored players from WoW while they have no content to play through and are bored.

Maybe, as these patches come the exp surplus wont be as harsh, they will tone it down and allow people to level more. Maybe they will begin to make crafting easier and less random to allow people to level it easier. Like I said, maybe its a game plan to get people hooked and keep them hooked long enough to PS3 release because SE wanted this to be a PS3 game in the beginning and they want to keep players inside of a certain gap for that time.

Perhaps a SE marketing exec was on the grassy knoll and in collusion with aliens?

I think this is just reading too much into things.

Edit: Not to mention that it would be better business for them to release a game for people that are bored, waiting for the WoW expansion, but be the game so great that people would stay after WoW's expansion is released. The money's in monthly fees.

I agree. I think someone, who had no clue about where the game was realistically in development, just thought it'd be good to release September 30 and the decision was made and the devs had to just live with it.

Marketing: We don't care what you do. We want the game to be out on 9/30. Period.

Dev director: Fine. (turns around to the dev team)

Dev director: Save all your progress and we'll make the DVDs NOW. Everything else will go to the patches after release. Also, tell the press writer to make it sound like we're planned to release the game with limited content and big patches will be coming along as we're actually listening to the players' complaints.

Seems to me if they were trying to work around the release of Cataclysm they would have just waited until the end of march and released a super sweet, super complete, super polished game simultaneously for the PS3 and PC. By then Cataclysm has been out for several months and the itch for something 'new' would be kicking in.

I'm thinking it was more of a plan to get the bulk of bugs and problems ironed out long before the PS3 release.

On the plus side they are actually making adjustments and additions as they go to address some of the worst problems when the game came out, and giving an additional month was a nice gesture as well

I agree. I think someone, who had no clue about where the game was realistically in development, just thought it'd be good to release September 30 and the decision was made and the devs had to just live with it.

LOL, Pikko ^^; This is the way ANY company work after entering the stock market! You think the people making decisions are gamers? The decision makers think is term of PCU and ARPU, not global quality.

Dunlag wrote:

Marketing: We want the game to be out on 9/30.

Dev director: but the game is not even half way done yet...

Marketing: We don't care what you do. We want the game to be out on 9/30. Period.

Dev director: Fine. (turns around to the dev team)

Dev director: Save all your progress and we'll make the DVDs NOW. Everything else will go to the patches after release. Also, tell the press writer to make it sound like we're planned to release the game with limited content and big patches will be coming along as we're actually listening to the players' complaints.

This is EXACTLY the way it usually happens, and this is why the marketing dpt is usually kept into a separate building ^^; for their own security.

Rushing unfinished games to market isn't exactly uncommon in the industry. One of my favorite games of the last decade, Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines was rushed like this by publisher Activision. The game uses Valve's Source engine, and because of it's release date, it was the first available game to do so--Half Life 2 wasn't released until a little over a month later. The game turned out to be the final nail in the coffin for Troika, who were already in financial trouble, and were kind of counting on this game to save them. Had they survived, they would probably have been sued into bankruptcy by Valve, for breaking their contract, and releasing the game ahead of HL2.

And you can really tell it was rushed too. It probably the most bug riddled game I've ever played. Despite that it's an awesome RPG-FPS hybrid, and today it runs fairly stable, and is more polished, thanks to unofficial fan-made patches.

I agree. I think someone, who had no clue about where the game was realistically in development, just thought it'd be good to release September 30 and the decision was made and the devs had to just live with it.

I live with that in a daily basis. So, yeah, i would put my money on that.

This just doesn't happen in software development. Deadlines are actually set by development, not by marketing. When a project is purposed, the time is analyzed and an estimation is generated by that analysis. Marketing comes in AFTER development sets the timeline.

What most likely happened is they got grossly behind schedule. Unfortunately, with multi-million dollar projects such as this, extending the timeline is not an option.

Marketing: We don't care what you do. We want the game to be out on 9/30. Period.

Dev director: Fine. (turns around to the dev team)

Dev director: Save all your progress and we'll make the DVDs NOW. Everything else will go to the patches after release. Also, tell the press writer to make it sound like we're planned to release the game with limited content and big patches will be coming along as we're actually listening to the players' complaints.

see... I'd buy that if there was actually any content missing.. but you can play 1-50 with the release version, there's even starting nation quests all the way up...

the problems that people are complaining about aren't from a lack of content or anything related to a time crunch, it's just poor decision making.

i.e. stating that there wouldn't be a hardware cursor in the game, presumably because the decision was to make the game with a ps3 controller in mind, rather than standard PC controls.. one of the few design decisions that was actually changed.

they chose to work on a console controller friendly UI rather than work on a PC friendly UI, it's not that it would take longer to make one or the other, just a design decision.

people complain about weird party mechanics, specifically the silly SP gain system... which has nothing to do with content, it was a design choice.

I'd feel pretty confident in saying that over 90% of the complaints have nothing to do with a lack of content, just a simple disagreement with the design choices.

...that's not something another 6 months or 6 years would ever fix.. if they wanted the UI to feel weird on a PC and right on a controller, it's going to feel weird no matter how long they spend on it.

...and really, would building an AH (search engine) really take any longer than creating the entirety of the market ward/retainer system?

tl;dr - the major flaws of this game have nothing to do with a rushed release or lack of development time, they're just very very poor design decisions.

I think the disconnect was during the Alpha/Beta stages. The people that got in were mainly long-term players of square titles and did not give much feedback, or speak specifically to what was exactly wrong. Likewise, most "good" feedback was ignored unless it made the game mostly unplayable. Then Open Beta hit and the Open Beta players were prevented from giving feedback on the forums or even to ask questions. They had fresh eyes on the game, and they missed the new perspectives on the game. The release hit and they were forced to listen and support the playerbase. Nearly a month later the panic button is pressed.

I think they had a goal to release the game before cataclysm which is actually the reverse of what they should have done. The problem is that there were only rumors of when cataclysm would be released, when square launched FFXIV. Wow doesn't determine the success of any MMO.

The company supporting the game, and those listening to consumers determine the success of a game.

This just doesn't happen in software development. Deadlines are actually set by development, not by marketing. When a project is purposed, the time is analyzed and an estimation is generated by that analysis. Marketing comes in AFTER development sets the timeline.

What most likely happened is they got grossly behind schedule. Unfortunately, with multi-million dollar projects such as this, extending the timeline is not an option.

Ideally it should happen like that, but it doesn't really. It's usually more like finance/marketing and the executive board having a chat and then they tell the dev team something like "you got XXX month to create this game". It's more or less flexible, the devs can go like "no, not possible" or "hum, too tight" - but they don't make the deadline.

I heard somewhere that SE had massive cut backs of staff during development of this game. That could be a contributing factor.

Also, I'm not sure what the press was like when the original FFXI came out (JP release, I mean) but I recall it only having basic content as well. Perhaps, when appealing to a different cultural crowd, they felt they could set the same standards for their simultaneous multi-continental release.

I think the disconnect was during the Alpha/Beta stages. The people that got in were mainly long-term players of square titles and did not give much feedback, or speak specifically to what was exactly wrong. Likewise, most "good" feedback was ignored unless it made the game mostly unplayable. Then Open Beta hit and the Open Beta players were prevented from giving feedback on the forums or even to ask questions. They had fresh eyes on the game, and they missed the new perspectives on the game. The release hit and they were forced to listen and support the playerbase. Nearly a month later the panic button is pressed.

I think they had a goal to release the game before cataclysm which is actually the reverse of what they should have done. The problem is that there were only rumors of when cataclysm would be released, when square launched FFXIV. Wow doesn't determine the success of any MMO.

The company supporting the game, and those listening to consumers determine the success of a game.

Oh there was a ton of feedback in Closed Beta. Believe me, there weren't as many "fanbois" as people seem to think there was. Honestly, i think SE had a vision, and tried to compromise, but that wasn't enough. There was some feedback they didn't even do anything about. I applaud SE for trying to come out with something different. You can call me whatever you want, but i think it takes balls of steel to do that in this market. It's just too bad it didn't work out too well. Maybe the next big SE MMO will be groundbreaking and great at the same time. For now, FF XIV is just good, with the greatness coming over time.

Marketing: We don't care what you do. We want the game to be out on 9/30. Period.

Dev director: Fine. (turns around to the dev team)

Yea but remember that this conversation wouldn't have happened a week or two before release, it probably happened a year before release and the devs have had a lot of time to make the game. I think their two at fault here, the devs for being slow in development, and the execs for releasing the game in its current state because no dev in his right mind would release the game as is.

[quote=Teneleven Oh there was a ton of feedback in Closed Beta. Believe me, there weren't as many "fanbois" as people seem to think there was. Honestly, i think SE had a vision, and tried to compromise, but that wasn't enough. There was some feedback they didn't even do anything about. [/quote]

This is true. Other than the same few fanboys (and they made their presence known in every post) almost everything was given rather critical feedback. They ignored all the feedback anyway. The fanbois in beta though were 100x worse than the ones here. BetaTesters: Square! you crapped the bed! Fanbois: YAY! Thanks so much for the brown sheets.

I wasn't trying to start a fanboy vs. nonfanboy war. I was just trying to describe that there was a disconnect from feedback. sorry

I didn't take it that way man lol. I was in closed beta, and i thought i would share that with you. You aren't the only one to think that the alpha/beta was lackluster in feedback. I just want people to know that it didn't go down like that.

Marketing: We don't care what you do. We want the game to be out on 9/30. Period.

Dev director: Fine. (turns around to the dev team)

Dev director: Save all your progress and we'll make the DVDs NOW. Everything else will go to the patches after release. Also, tell the press writer to make it sound like we're planned to release the game with limited content and big patches will be coming along as we're actually listening to the players' complaints.

Agreed, but you forgot what happened next...

Marketing director(turns to window): How in the **** did it take them 6 years to come up with a "not even halfway done" game... /jumps out window

____________________________

Rinsui wrote:

Only hips + boobs all day and hips + boobs all over my icecream

HaibaneRenmei wrote:

30 bucks is almost free

cocodojo wrote:

Its personal preference and all, but yes we need to educate WoW players that this is OUR game, these are Characters and not Toons. Time to beat that into them one at a time.

Marketing: We don't care what you do. We want the game to be out on 9/30. Period.

Dev director: Fine. (turns around to the dev team)

Dev director: Save all your progress and we'll make the DVDs NOW. Everything else will go to the patches after release. Also, tell the press writer to make it sound like we're planned to release the game with limited content and big patches will be coming along as we're actually listening to the players' complaints.

Agreed, but you forgot what happened next...

Marketing director(turns to window): How in the @#%^ did it take them 6 years to come up with a "not even halfway done" game... /jumps out window

Go to school, learn how to create you own engine. Then, get a team of however many people you can afford to pay. Tell us how long it took to code this game.

Seriously. You think 6 years is a long time, yet you probably never coded 1 scene of anything with state of the art graphics. Try it and get back to us. When you do, be sure to tell us about all the things you Fu^&*d up.

What happened was they screwed around for 3 years trying to build a modern graphics engine rather than leasing one and kept falling behind the curve of the state of the art compared to engines by Epic and Crytek. Three years of this and they have what is basically a circa 2006 graphics engine only now it's 2009.

Finally, about two years ago the higher ups in the company tell them to stop ******** around and make a **** game already.

And don't try to say that it is just the limits of DirectX 9. Even in DirectX 9.0c you can do things like global shadowing and ambient occlusion that makes a real difference in the lighting. Just look at CryEngine 2 in DirectX 9 mode and compare it to Crystal Tools and it becomes apparent how much better CryEngine is even in DirectX 9.

Edited, Oct 21st 2010 4:42am by Lobivopis

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Final Fantasy XI 12-14-11 Update wrote:

Adjust the resolution of menus. The main screen resolution for "FINAL FANTASY XI" is dependent on the "Overlay Graphics Resolution" setting. If the Overlay Graphics Resolution is set higher than the Menu Resolution, menus will be automatically resized.

Oh there was a ton of feedback in Closed Beta. Believe me, there weren't as many "fanbois" as people seem to think there was. Honestly, i think SE had a vision, and tried to compromise, but that wasn't enough. There was some feedback they didn't even do anything about.

I agree to a point. I was also in closed alpha and beta testing the there was tons of feedback. For the section of feedback dedicated to the UI alone, there were over 60 pages of it just during the beta 1+2 phases, just before open beta. There actually were many more "fanbois" than there were people willing to take an objective look at the game as it stood then. Whenever issues were brought to the attention of other testers, either for discussion or to see if anyone else was experiencing the same problem, there were generally only people apologizing or making excuses for SE.

The most common responses you would expect to see were "gtfo to feedback section" "there are in-house testers working on the real version of the game for release, we're just stress testing servers" "it's just alpha" "it's just beta 1"... and so on. Only a few of us were willing to try and get the others to stand up and fight for this game. Those who were against us were basically trolling themselves. They now have each other to blame for how poorly this game is doing. They failed to understand that comments about what was wrong needed to be voiced. Instead, they were upset that we could be so rude to SE in light of the fact that we had been chosen to test.

When you give a ****, you will tell a friend that they're ******* up because it's the truth. You won't stand there and watch them fall because you don't want to hurt their feelings. Without all of this uproar over the state of the release version SE would probably never know that they had so many issues to work out. They definitely didn't pay any attention to the feedback and they're paying for it.

____________________________

Rinsui wrote:

Only hips + boobs all day and hips + boobs all over my icecream

HaibaneRenmei wrote:

30 bucks is almost free

cocodojo wrote:

Its personal preference and all, but yes we need to educate WoW players that this is OUR game, these are Characters and not Toons. Time to beat that into them one at a time.

Go to school, learn how to create you own engine. Then, get a team of however many people you can afford to pay. Tell us how long it took to code this game.

Seriously. You think 6 years is a long time, yet you probably never coded 1 scene of anything with state of the art graphics. Try it and get back to us. When you do, be sure to tell us about all the things you Fu^&*d up.

I'm a CS major currently. I do understand that it takes a while to develop and code. What I don't understand is how you spend all that time creating a great engine, add in some beautiful art and music and then **** it all over with horrible gameplay mechanics. No one here is refuting that the game is beautiful and that it took time to get it there.

The issue is that they overlooked the most simple things that would have made this game much more player friendly. If they had only set out to make the most beautiful looking MMO in terms of graphics, this engine has succeeded in doing just that. They then buried it under possibly the lamest excuse for an interface and then forgot to include to add all of the basic functions, things they already had a pretty firm grasp on in FFXI. Eye candy is no excuse for any of that.

____________________________

Rinsui wrote:

Only hips + boobs all day and hips + boobs all over my icecream

HaibaneRenmei wrote:

30 bucks is almost free

cocodojo wrote:

Its personal preference and all, but yes we need to educate WoW players that this is OUR game, these are Characters and not Toons. Time to beat that into them one at a time.

What I don't understand is how you spend all that time creating a great woefully outdated and poorly coded engine

ftfy

Edited, Oct 21st 2010 4:45am by Lobivopis

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Final Fantasy XI 12-14-11 Update wrote:

Adjust the resolution of menus. The main screen resolution for "FINAL FANTASY XI" is dependent on the "Overlay Graphics Resolution" setting. If the Overlay Graphics Resolution is set higher than the Menu Resolution, menus will be automatically resized.

I agree. I think someone, who had no clue about where the game was realistically in development, just thought it'd be good to release September 30 and the decision was made and the devs had to just live with it.

Have no idea how true that is....

I work in IT and our boss took years to finally listen to us, you can not simply release something without heavy testing. Thats testing all over our college by many users not just by us...

As a result our virtual learning environment was released well before it was ready (not our task thank god). You have to test test test and test but company directors really dont have a clue.

Devs are not the ones who come up with the ideas on release dates, they can/do advise.. If they are listened to is another thing.

Go to school, learn how to create you own engine. Then, get a team of however many people you can afford to pay. Tell us how long it took to code this game.

Seriously. You think 6 years is a long time, yet you probably never coded 1 scene of anything with state of the art graphics. Try it and get back to us. When you do, be sure to tell us about all the things you Fu^&*d up.

They should of leased a graphics engine from another company, then they could of concentrated on the game itself. They wasted years on making a custom engine when it was honestly beyond them, it's still not that good for the time involved.

As someone that knows nothing about programming or anything very much that goes into game design even I know that and see they made a mistake by wasting so much dev time on that one aspect.

They should of leased a graphics engine from another company, then they could of concentrated on the game itself. They wasted years on making a custom engine when it was honestly beyond them, it's still not that good for the time involved.

As someone that knows nothing about programming or anything very much that goes into game design even I know that and see they made a mistake by wasting so much dev time on that one aspect.

Well, the engine is most likely the custom-made crystal tools engine which was developed for several games, not just XIV. XIII and vs. XIII are also using the same engine, although obviously tweaked for single player purposes.

While they could have saved initial dev time by using someone else's engine, this engine is obviously suited for the needs of an FF MMO specifically, making their future work easier to manage. For example, they can make cutscenes faster, much more-so than in FFXI and also make them much more impressive. Same goes for character models, equipment and monsters. All the "content" that requires the most development time, in other words. It is also tailored with PS3 in mind, unlike other game engines (for MMO's especially).

The engine itself is impressive, but the programmers making use of it aren't (which matters more than the engine itself). Art designers are obviously great, as one would expect from a Japanese company.

____________________________

SE:

Quote:

We really want to compete against World of Warcraft and for example the new Star Wars MMO.

my experience in alpha was dont dare post something negative otherwise every fanbois had a go at you, and that assumed that you were able to log on at your time and didnt lag out walking 3 feet. my experience with everquest/d&do/lotro alpha/betas differs from ffxiv. the others had devs who wanted feedback and didnt assume they were right all the time. even in a mature game like eq you can have sensible discussions with devs in beat forums and in the game. se is the only company ive dealt with where feedback directly to the devs is not simple if possible at all

In the back of their minds, they got in a mode of thinking where they were trying to slow down progress, at the very least not help palyers progress faster (so that they can out expansions before people reach the current cap).

So when the synth system takes 10 screens to accomplish, they say, "Sure, that will be OK for now."

Selling things to an NPC take about 5 seconds per item, "Right on, that ought to slow them down, for now."

No search function, "Meh, they will find what they want eventually, for now."

Just a few example of things that could be faster, but that was not the priority. The priority was getting more, more, more content completed. Not a faster interface and certainly not shortcut commands. With the delay of the PS3, helping people progress faster became even less desirable.

Six years is a very long time... Companies should really begin to hire more graphic designers to chip away at the time constraints. Next gen graphics have really slowed down the gaming industry.

Not really. If you don't have the resources and programming talent to create an up to date graphics engine you just lease Unreal, CryEngine, iD tech or Lithtech and get to work on your game. These companies have made a business out of providing state of the art graphics engines and development tools at a fraction of the price of what it would cost you to develop your own.

Edited, Oct 21st 2010 9:19pm by Lobivopis

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Final Fantasy XI 12-14-11 Update wrote:

Adjust the resolution of menus. The main screen resolution for "FINAL FANTASY XI" is dependent on the "Overlay Graphics Resolution" setting. If the Overlay Graphics Resolution is set higher than the Menu Resolution, menus will be automatically resized.

Well, the engine is most likely the custom-made crystal tools engine which was developed for several games, not just XIV. XIII and vs. XIII are also using the same engine, although obviously tweaked for single player purposes.

While they could have saved initial dev time by using someone else's engine, this engine is obviously suited for the needs of an FF MMO specifically, making their future work easier to manage. For example, they can make cutscenes faster, much more-so than in FFXI and also make them much more impressive. Same goes for character models, equipment and monsters. All the "content" that requires the most development time, in other words. It is also tailored with PS3 in mind, unlike other game engines (for MMO's especially).

The engine itself is impressive, but the programmers making use of it aren't (which matters more than the engine itself). Art designers are obviously great, as one would expect from a Japanese company.

windexy wrote:

Most licensed engines are designed for FPS. Vanguard used the same engine as unreal, quake or some sh*t and was completely unsuited for the task of running an MMO and was completely apparent.

As soon as I read that they licensed an engine designed for a FPS I said that performance would suck, it would eat truckloads of RAM and would be buggy as all ****. I was right.

I'm just going to come right out and say it. You are both talking out of your asses

Almost all Korean MMOs are based either on Unreal 3 or CryEngine and they have no such problems (I will leave the matter of gameplay alone as that is not relevant to this discussion). In fact Unreal has been used for so many MMOs that Epic now has an MMO server framework designed for it.

Batman: Arkham Asylum is based on Unreal 3.5 and it's about as far from an FPS as you can get, it is also one of, if not the best game released this year.

Lineage II used the same engine as Vanguard (Unreal 2) and had none of the same problems.

Almost 75% of modern games are based on a leased engine. The companies selling the engines realized a long time ago that they would need to be able to do more than just FPSs with them and thus Unreal, CryEngine etc. can be used to build any type of game you want.

Developers also can have access to the source code and are able to make any changes needed to support their game if they desire it (this costs more, but still costs far, far less than building your own engine)

And as far as Crystal Tools being "impressive". What exactly is impressive about an engine that doesn't support global shadowing or other modern features and has far steeper system requirements that it should have for it's feature set? FFXIV has pretty art assets but the engine itself is terribly outdated.

Edited, Oct 21st 2010 9:46pm by Lobivopis

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Final Fantasy XI 12-14-11 Update wrote:

Adjust the resolution of menus. The main screen resolution for "FINAL FANTASY XI" is dependent on the "Overlay Graphics Resolution" setting. If the Overlay Graphics Resolution is set higher than the Menu Resolution, menus will be automatically resized.

I imagine the release date was set before the cataclysm date was set. They must have known that they were going to be released around the same time, but I don't think they learned when cata was coming out and pushed 14 a few months earlier.

My personal non-conspiracy theory, they really had no idea they were releasing a crappy game.

If you could make the decision again knowing what you know now, would you recommend building an all-new engine for Final Fantasy XIII?YK: I think that instead of developing something completely new, we would try our hand at improving upon existing technology. Tools and engines improve through a process of trial and error and countless revisions, and that’s what really makes them more efficient.

____________________________

Final Fantasy XI 12-14-11 Update wrote:

Adjust the resolution of menus. The main screen resolution for "FINAL FANTASY XI" is dependent on the "Overlay Graphics Resolution" setting. If the Overlay Graphics Resolution is set higher than the Menu Resolution, menus will be automatically resized.